General Chat

What a great threat thread with fascinating stories to read!!

My unexpected discovery was to find out that my Dad, an only child, had actually not quite been an only child. A sister was born some years before my Dad came along. She was a premature birth and she died at 1 day old.
But this had never ever been spoken of, so Dad didn't know.

I suppose my grandma never spoke about it, because, well, they just didn't in those days (1920), plus, as she had got married just after her 21st birthday, and 6 weeks before the birth, it appears this was the reason for getting married. A marriage which barely lasted a few years.

She must have thought she was taking the secret to her grave with her.

K

My quest now is to find where the baby is buried and visit the grave.

Great grandfather having left his wife, changed his surname to that of his mistress and started a second family whose living descendents knew nothing of his first family.

Grandma being adopted.

Another great grandfather illegally marrying his dead wife's sister.

Great great grandfather being widowed four times.

Two of my wife's great grandparents being killed in separate road accidents in the same town 18 months apart.

And so on ...................................

My 'very proper' grandma married a month before my Uncle was born!

My other grandma's mother had her illegitimately and abandoned her at birth.

My husband's maternal Great grandparents eloped. And the Great Grandad was a nightmare to track down as he wasn't born in Northampton (when everyone else on that side of the family going back to the early 1800's was).

I've got numerous deaths that involved the Coroner, including 3 suicides (the most recent being my dad last year).

Possibly the lady with the dead baby did not mention it because she had been told by the medical profession never to do so.
A dear lady I knew had given birth to a stillborn girl,it must have been in the early forties,after having three previous children.
Poor Alice was taken straight back on to the ward with the other mothers and their new babies and her husband was told never to mention it,which I believe he did.
Because of the way Alice reacted she was taken to the psychiatric hospital where electric shock treatment was administered.

My surprise discovery was that 2 Grandfathers both died at the age of 37 years, 1 with Pneumonia and the other with Heart Failure and Exaustion, a 3rd Grandfather after 1 Grandmother remarried died of Drowning. Still looking for more surprises.

F.

Hi Have just found out that one of my ancestors, who I have been searching for was in fact hanged for breaking and entering the home of Catherine doweger duchess at Park Street London. His trial at the Old Bailey makes fascinating reading. I gather that he would have been buried under the paving at Newgate Prison which is now the site of the Old Bailey

Sad and scary really,though

If anyone is interested in checking if there ancestors had a similar fate the URL is http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

my mum had 6 half brothers and sisters that she knew nothing about. They tried tracing her in the 60's before the age of the internet and received snail mail from my grandfather telling them not to bother us as we have all moved on!!!
I now have new aunts and uncles all over the world who I keep in touch with via the net. And I have countless cousins!!

I'm pretty new to family research (18 months)

My first OMG experience was to find that paternal grandfather was born 1921 but his parents didn't marry until 1927. Their marriage cert confirmed that his father was divorced.

I then tried to find children from 1st marriage and came to the conclution there were none.

Last Oct I visited Kew and was able to look at the divorce records which made emotional reading. There were 2 children from 1st marriage, 1 died in infancy and the other was being looked after by G GF's mother.

To date I've been uable to find out what happened to GF's half-brother.

I also discovered that GF had 6 siblings but only 2 names meant anything to my father. Now that FreeBDM has been updated I was able to estabish 3 died in infancy.

There can be great highs when researching but at the same time some sad lows.

Katie

Sharon: LOL!!! I dont think theres been any major shocks in mine as I knew absolutely nothing to start with and every line has had a story. But my Gypsy great great great grandad hung himself at Edward Terrace in Sussex, the street is still there and I'd love to visit. Gypsies in my family had been stopping on the street for decades. Then his son, my gg grandad was badly injured in a horse race in Porthcawl and died at his home nearby. But I suppose one surprising thing was a row of 3 old, empty cottages near my father in law. I love the cottages so much and they're on a hill surrounded by sheep, no car access. Doing my daughters tree, I found out her great great grandmother was brought up in one of the cottages! Im now trying to find out who owns them so I can ask if I can look inside. Theyre tiny but the families had lots of kids, would have been a hard life.

Very recently I discovered that my grandad's parents never married, or even stayed together. Perhaps his father was already married, I don't know.

Grandad's surname was his mother's surname, his middle name was his father's surname.
Grandad's birth is registered under his mother's name, and again, a separate registration under his father's name.
His Baptism certificate has only his mother's name and a dash where the father's name is required.

In the 1911 census grandad is 3 yrs old and living with his grandparents and their children. Yet the woman he called auntie Mary all his life was actually his real mother. As she had given birth to him at the age of 15, they covered up by using his grandmother's name as his mother. Bearing in mind this was a good Catholic family living in rural Ireland at the turn of the last century, they were left with little option other than to fib I suppose, yet felt they had to be honest in the census and declared him as grandson.

It's not an uncommon scenario, as we now know.
I wonder if my grandad knew, I certainly don't think he did. He called his mother auntie Mary until she died in 1985.

K

Karen.
Thats a bit like Catherine Cookson the author who thought " our Kate" was her sister but she found out she was her mother

I found out my mum was born 14 months before her parents married which might explain why mum said her grandmother Margaret looked down on her daughter in law because she wasnt good enough.

I then found out Margaret was illegitimate herself. Double standards or perhaps Margaret didnt know

After finding out several years ago that I was a crack shot with a rifle I then found out that I am descended from a whole bunch of East End gunsmiths.

Has to be genetic!

Jill

Mrs Grumpy.

I hope non went to America. You might find you are related to Billy The Kid

I wish I was Quinsgran!

Or Annie Oakley! That'd be good.

Jill

I wonder if anyone on GR has them on their tree?

Billy the Kid ------real name there seems to be 2 versions Henry Mc Carty born 23 Nov 1859 in New York. or William Bonney Died July 14th 1881 Fort Sumner New Mexico

Occupation,Ranch hand,gambler,cattle rustler,outlaw. I wonder if they got that from the census lol

Father unknown possibly Patrick Henry Mc Carty,Michael Mc Carty .

mother Catherine Mc Carty ,/Katherine McCarty Bonney
Step father William Antrim

See who needs movies, real life is so much more eventful!

Romany - how interesting about the houses!

It's so sad how many little babies and children died, life must have been so hard. I am always a bit amazed that we are here at all given the world wars, epidemics, disasters etc!

Mrs Grumpy - yep must be in the blood!

Having delved into Scottish records we failed to find OH's grandfather who had disappeared from the family scene in 1930s.
2 of his daughters are still living, but didn't know what became of their father although they knew he had at one time been working on mail ships off the east coast of Africa. As a family they had visited, but their mother couldn't settle, so they returned to Scotland.
We wrote for help to a researcher in South Africa, but she couldn't find a death of William, b. 1890 either.

When the online passenger lists were shown on Ancestry, ...there he was, arriving with another wife and child ( had he conveniently forgotten the family in Aberdeen ?).
OH has since visited his grave in Bristol, ...... not at all where we had first expected to find him.

Gwyn

hi,found out some yrs ago through geneology ,that my dads great uncle joseph had been hung for murder in march 24th(my daughters birth date)1905 by the famous hangman albert pirpoint.

Granny's mother was always known to have been a young widow when she married the second time to some cantankerous old git who treated her badly.So much so the neighbours staged a chariberie outside his house.

Truth was,she didn't marry either of them.

Also my mother's oldest brother did not belong to my grandmother at all but to my grandfather who was thirty-three at the time and my grandmother's little sister who was fifteen.Eugh!

Gwyn, makes you wonder how many people simply just started a new family and left their old one!

Suzanne what a coincidence on the death/bith dates. I have noticed that a lot of the birth dates in the current and generation prior duplicate a number of times, the death dates ...makes me wonder anyway!

Sharron, gosh that must have been difficult for everyone....